When he isn’t touring as the lead guitarist of Broken Social Scene, Andrew Whiteman devotes his creativity to his band Apostle of Hustle. After spending time with Apostle’s latest album Easy Speaks, it was no surprise that Andrew Whiteman was an intense intellectual.

After chatting with Kingston-based folk band Monuments and Statues for a whole three minutes and 27 seconds, they invited me to become a member of their band. Perhaps it was wrong of me to casually mention that I dabble with the ukulele, but after spending a few minutes with the group, they’re the type I know I—and most other people—wouldn’t mind
playing with.

After having the pleasure of reading Christina Rossetti’s Victorian poem “Goblin Market” for two English classes during my time at Queen’s, the chance to see a dramatic interpretation of the familiar piece was a welcome change of pace.

“Everyone of them is somebody’s child.” The man on the screen tells us that his grandmother used to tell him this refrain when he, himself, was a child. As an adult, he seems to have accepted this mantra into his life. The man behind the camera, Peter Kingstone, hopes we will as well.

It’s a terrifying prospect to interview a band for your first Journal article. That terror is only heightened when that band has received critical acclaim for their 10 CDs, been likened to R.E.M. and have been touring across Canada.
Skydiggers founding member Josh Finlayson is the exact opposite of a cocky rock star. When I talked to him, he described his career as very humbling and said he yearns to keep working and all the while a dog barks in the background.

As a fourth-year student, I’ve been to my fair share of Queen’s Players shows. However, I’ve never been to a Queen’s Players show sober—I doubt many people have. Although it may sound awful, being sober at a Players show is a surprisingly enlightening experience.

Most people who know me are blatantly aware that I love to complain. There’s nothing I love more than a well-timed jab at others expense or bringing someone down a peg. That being said, I wish I could continue this article by filling it with the occasional pun or hilarious critique about how the liquor was the best part of my evening with at the Queen’s Players show Miley…why so Cyrus??—but I can’t.

artist in profile

Transformation and change is evident in the world around us, so it’s no surprise that it appears in the work of Canadian artist Bertram Brooker in the It’s Alive! Bertram Brooker and Vitalism exhibition on display at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Bertram Brooker (1888-1955) was a Canadian artist whose work displays a fascinating transformation from straightforward, natural images early in his career to more whimsical and skewed works later on.

I have a confession. I’m 20 years old and I’m still afraid of monsters.
Yes, the under-your-bed, peeking-out-of-your-closet, slithering-down-the-drainpipe kind.

When your band is splashed on the cover of the hottest alt-weekly magazine, you don’t really need campus newspapers to like you anymore. That much was evident when I spoke to vocalist and frontwoman Becky Ninkovic of You say Party! We Say Die! on Monday.

We all know cable on a small budget isn’t the greatest. The one stand-by people tend to gravitate towards is the nightly ritual of the sometimes gory, always provocative, super-suspenseful mystery that is Crime Scene Investigation.

To call actress, musician and comedian Charlyne Yi awkward would be an understatement. You may vaguely recognize Yi from her stoner-girl performance in Knocked Up—she’s the type of girl that often gets overlooked, which makes her latest flick refreshing to watch.

Think about life—think about emanating energy, breathing in and out and rocking out to the cartoons jingles of the 1990s. For those of us left still clinging onto the era that raised us, Montreal-based band Think About Life is an apt upgrade to the power-pop dance tunes of our pre-teen dances.

Montreal-based band Malajube has been making its way onto the charts and into the hearts of people all over Canada. Now they’re reaching out internationally to find fans everywhere.
The francophone indie-rock band was formed around 2002 and released their first album, Le Compte Complet, in 2004.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will, takes its title from a festival surrounding the twelve days of Christmas, the finale of which becomes a carnival of misrule, where servants dressed up as princes, ladies courted men and fools were celebrated for their wisdom.

Multi-instrumental Ohbijou melts hearts—and icicles. The the seven-person Toronto band’s soft and precious tunes have endeared audiences to a diverse range of instruments and talents, all equally able to soothe a wintry soul. Ohbijou, originally the solo project of singer-songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Casey Mecija, is composed of friends and siblings all brought together in a collaborative spirit evocative of the musical moment.

When Arkells first heard themselves on the radio in their van in downtown Toronto after a show, they got really, really excited.
“We were so excited we put all the windows down,” vocalist, keyboardist and guitarist Dan Griffin said. “We must have looked like the biggest idiots. There were old ladies waiting to cross the intersection.”

Rock and Roll Report Card